This is definitely good news for the tech industry as a whole - both TSMC and UMC, Taiwan's most prominent fabrication facility for silicon wafers, are both seeing increases in monthly revenue month-to-month and better year-to-year re

Over at Hack a Day you will find the coolest thing you will see all day, unless you somehow manage to have an absolutely incredible day and top it. It is a hand portable coil gun which can fire 42g rounds with about 18 joules or 13.3 foot pounds worth of energy. An average 9mm round delivers just over 300 foot pounds or about 400 joules and weighs around 9g, so while the sheer energy is much lower, the weight is a good deal more. As for the lightbulb at the front, it works as a charging resisto

3D Realms have guaranteed themselves a place in the history books for having told a joke so long they died before they could get to the punchline. It all started just bit over a decade ago, on April 28, 1997, and along the way we have seen many false climaxes, which brought our hopes up that this time they really truly would tell the punchline, but each time we were disappointed. 3D Realms wasn't alone in this titanic effort, they had help from people like Take Two and GoD to give us confidence when our attention started to wane, but alas they were in on it from the beginning; they

About 20 years ago, the big hit for the year was Activision's Death Track, featuring three cars and a lot of explosions. There was the fast Hellcat, an armed Crusher and heavily armoured Pitbull to start the game with and a ton of upgrades for engines, armour, brakes and most importantly heavy ordinance. Many many hours were spent circling a track and destroying all competition. For those of us with fond memories of those hours, the hope of a sequel or remake has dwindled over the years, but s

Tom Sonderman, Global Foundries new VP of Manufacturing Systems and Technology talks about Automated Precision Manufacturing over at The Inquirer. This is the tool that they feel will give Global Foundries an advantage over TSMC and Intel, as TSMC does not have the technology and he feels that Intel makes much less use of it than GF will. The basic idea behind APM is that it allows the manufacturer to monitor the wafers as they are produced and make tiny changes to allow for b

If you are looking for a mouse or keyboard, the amount of choice you have shares a lot with the cereal aisle in teh supermarket, with your average gamer being a sugar addicted 8 year old. Consider a new board on the market, the

Razer Arctosa Gaming Keyboard. It keeps the standard keyboard layout, something that many other gaming keyboards like to play with, instead focusing on design and macro programming.

Bandwidth caps are a big issue for anyone spending a goodly amount of time on the Internet, especially if they are a fan of streaming media or open source projects. ISPs have long maintained that it is necessary in order to provide good service to all customers and that it is just plain expensive to provide; not that this has stopped a slow increase in caps as the ISPs try to attract customers from other providers. Ars Technica looked into the profit marg

Samsung has a different take on the MP3 player, which is exemplified in the YP-P3 player. It comes with absolutely no software, like a USB headset all required software is on the MP3 player its self. It also supports drag and drop file transfers, there are no importing procedures necessary when you are adding music to the player. The device is used with its touchscreen interface, no buttons or toggles to play with. Find out how it sounds at CCE Reviews

The Sinowal Trojan, or Torpig or Mebroot, or whatever other name you would like to give the thing has been thriving on PCs around the world for almost 3 years now. That is not because no anti-virus or anti-malware program can remove it, it is because of the apathy of users and network admins who will get around to that patch or update next Monday. That is of course assuming that they are even aware of the updates and patches or if they are simply wait for their nephew who knows computers to visit at Christmas and clean up the PC. The net needs people to either act as or creat

There is little more annoying than a PC that is convinced everything is fine, even though it isn't working properly. Imagine if you will a nice little network connection icon in the task bar which reports a successful connection at 100mbs, but yet for some reason refuses to connect to the Net. Wouldn't that just make your day?

Offloading is the new merger for today's electronic manufacturers and it is TSMC that is reaping the benefit. They already handle AMD's 40nm process chips, at least until Global Foundries finds its stride, as well as working with Intel on developing a 'System on a Chip', which will be a smaller, less power hungry Atom. Now it is Fujitsu's turn, as they are passing at least some, but quite possibly all, of their chip manufacturing to TSMC. As well They are selling off their HDD business to Toshiba, a merger mimicking
IBM's glomming onto Hitachi.

As it stands right now, the Windows 7 RC1 will be active into 2010 making it a viable OS for the next year. Right now you need to be a TechNet or MSDN subscriber, but that will change on the 5th of May when it becomes available to everyone. That Release Candidate will likely be one of the more expensive flavours of Windows 7, not some emasculated Home-lite version, which may have you hooked on the equivalent of Ultimate Edition for when you do have to purchase it in June of 2010. You can

Just because you stood in line for a week for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and gathered a lot of stares and comments about how waiting that long was completely unnecessary; someone with a WoW moded case, mouse and mousepad set is going to beat you when it comes to fanaticism. Take heart from SteelSeries, for they will provide a factory made version so that you don't need to mod one all by yourself. The SteelSeries WOW Mouse and Mat set will put you over the top of the rest if the fans at LAN parties, so

HEXUS has some information to share about a WW2 shoot 'em up with a bit of a twist. Instead of being a solo member of one of the large armies involved in the conflict, you work in occupied France with members of the French Resistance and Allied forces to sabotage the Nazis who occupy France. It sounds like a mix of stealth and action, along with big explosions and vehicles to hijack for added mayhem. Check the preview for some game information, but not the release date, which has yet to be annou

The Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship really hit it's stride in 2009, with a lot more press coverage at wider number of sites compared to previous years, including PC Perspective. Our own Steve Grever headed to LA with camera in hand to capture stills and videos of the best overclockers strutting their stuff. LN tended to be the cooler of choice, but there were a wide variety of rigging, extra fans and insulation, including one competitor who went with full mineral oil submersion. Check out the

If you have an iPhone that hasn't been sprung from jail, you have an AT&T contract as they have the exclusive rights to provide service. It looks like they are going to have to share the bed with a new party, Verizon. A rumoured smaller iPhone could possibly have Verizon as a service provider. There is also a rumoured Kindle-like device that Apple might have in development which will be smaller overall, but with a larger touch screen. Ars

If you ever wished for a boot to the head when you are gaming, you have to spend the $40 it will cost to pick up the Audio2 FX2 Force Feedback Gaming Headset. It uses old style dual RCA jacks as opposed to a USB connection, as well as batteries and a USB port to provide power. OCMODSHOP was impressed with the sound quality, both playback and recording, and they did get a kick out of the force feedback.&nbs

Handmade cabling or factory made? It is a question that can bring up technical terms that sound more at home on the Enterprise than they do in a server room, such as standing harmonic waves, and the loudest proponents of factory cabling are likely to have cut their teeth on coaxial thicknet ethernet cables. Slashdot is having it out here; the EEs and cabling guys are not getting along too well which makes for a more lively conversation. Jump in if you have an opinion, otherwise keep cutting